When historians get hysterical

In the age of Donald Trump, highly accomplished and well-respected liberal voices continue to lose their collective minds — Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian, seemingly among them.

After President Trump’s Oval Office address on the need for a wall on our Southern border, Meacham tweeted: America should “build a wall of steel, a wall as high as Heaven” against the flow of immigrants, quoting Georgia Gov. Clifford Walker, at a 1924 convention of the Ku Klux Klan, then a powerful force at a time of strain for the white working class.

Wow. A “historian” deliberately linking the current president of the United States to the most vile, repugnant and reviled organization in American history.

It should be noted that Meacham made no such comparison when President Barack Obama said: “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked.” Or when Hillary Clinton admitted: “I voted, when I was a senator, to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.”

As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently stressed: “The only things that have changed between then and now are the political winds, and of course, the occupant of the White House. So this is no newfound principled objection; it’s just political spite. A partisan tantrum being prioritized over the public interest.”

Precisely. Historians should never push opinions based upon “political spite” or as part of a “partisan tantrum.” History, the truth and facts should never be bent or invented to favor one political party over the other or one ideology over another.

I happen to believe Meacham is an exceptional writer who has done some truly captivating and informative work. All the more reason to be disappointed to witness his now never-ending campaign to smear Trump.

In his bestselling book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” Meacham opens with a highly opinioned and clearly personal denouncement of Trump.

A book the Trump-hating New York Times praised by pointing out Meacham’s mindset: “Appalled by the ascendancy of Donald J. Trump, and shaken by the deadly white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville in 2017, Meacham returns to other moments in history when fear and division seemed rampant.” The Meacham-Trump narrative is now carved in granite.

Unfortunately, if you look at the go-to “historians” — especially those the major networks and CNN and MSNBC often have on or quote — you’d see a clear bias among them in favor of liberal of Democratic politicians.

Take this embarrassing exchange between “historian” Michael Beschloss and radio host Don Imus soon after Obama’s 2008 election:

On what actual evidence did “historian” Beschloss base his assertion? The SAT scores Obama refused to release? The college transcripts he also kept private? Any existing IQ scores he withheld?

Despite a lack of evidence, a “historian” declared Obama smarter than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

True, this was just a casual radio conversation. But it sounded more the opinion of an uninformed, star-struck teenybobber than a world-class, impartial historian.

It would be as if the Noble Peace Prize had been awarded to a just-elected Obama in the hope he would make “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” (Oh, wait — that actually happened.)

Now, it’s one thing if the Pulitzer and Nobel committees dive into the tank for liberal and socialist issues; it’s quite another if professional historians join them.

Some historians, after all, and certainly Hollywood filmmakers, have massive platforms and enormous power to influence. That’s all the more reason they should never twist or reinvent history or facts to reflect their personal biases or smear someone purely out of malevolence.

For the sake of us all, we need them to be better than that.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and an author.